Why Your Operations Team Struggles and What To Do About It

There are three reasons your operations team struggle to give your clients what they want.

The biggest reason your operations team struggles to give your clients what they want is because your clients can’t have what they want the way they want it. Your people can get them the outcome they need, but they can get your them the outcome doing it the way the client wants it done. Which leads us straight into the next reason you operations team is having a tough time: conflict.
Telling your client that they can’t have what they want the way they want it is a recipe for conflict in a lot of cases. Your clients don’t want to know what they can’t have it, and they don’t want excuses. Whining about how difficult it is to produce results isn’t likely to win you any sympathy either. So, in a lot cases, the problems persist and become an even more fertile ground in which to grow dissatisfaction. When there is enough unhappiness, you a may get called; you sold it, you own it.
Why do your operations team members avoid the necessary conflict surrounding the problem? Simple. They don’t want to be responsible for losing your client.

Your operations team is full of good people. They are trying to do right. They work really hard to keep the promises that you made, and they bump up against constraints that were unknown until they began working on your client’s account.

But your operations people are not salespeople. They’re not used to having difficult conversations, and they may not have the same rapport-building skills that you have. They weren’t hired to sell ideas; they were hired to execute. You owe them your support and your help.

Schedule a meeting to address the challenging issue with your client. Help your client understand that they can likely have the outcome they want, but you may need to deliver that outcome in a way that is different from what they believe necessary. And you may even need more money to do so. Bring some game subject matter experts to the meeting so they can watch and learn–and so they can execute.

Don’t wish your operations team was made up of salespeople. You need people with their skills to do their job. Don’t let them go it alone so long that their relationship is damaged. They still need to work with your client. Instead, help your operations deal with the conflict and help them find a way forward.